Photo Credit: Dutch Art Institute Layal Ftouni
Layal Ftouni is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at the Graduate Gender Programme, and a research affiliate at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University. As a core faculty member, Layal teaches a variety of courses in Gender Studies and supervises dissertations on MA, RMA, and PhD levels.
Layal’s research and teaching is transdisciplinary. She works across the fields of gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, political theory, visual studies and critical race studies. Layal is currently working on a new research project (2020-2024) funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) tentatively entitled Ecologies of Violence: Affirmations of Life at the Frontiers of Survival . The research explores the politics of life and living at the boundaries with death (both human and environmental) in conditions of war and settler colonialism, focusing on Syria and Palestine. She is also currently working on a journal issue entitled Radical Kinship: Solidarity and Ethico-Political Belonging for Darkmatter Journal (2021). The journal addresses the urgency of intersectional solidarity and coalitional politics in our current global political conjuncture.